For non-believers looking for a Christmas ritual, Screwtape offers wise advice

In his novel Screwed letters, CS Lewis asks the titular demon to recommend to a junior colleague to encourage, in order to divert a potential Christian from the path of virtue, the habit of “shopping in church”.

“The search for a ‘suitable’ church,” advises the Elder Devil, “makes man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil.”

I suspect Lewis is right. I can certainly report from anecdotal experience a tendency to become more selective about the church the less you go. My own family did not abandon the local parish church for the odor and bell service in town until our church had diminished to the status of a Christmas ritual.

But while I cannot speak for those who have faith, as an unbeliever, a certain degree of “church shopping” seems perfectly tenable. For those of us who are not connected to the inner life of service, it is precisely for its outer form that we are here.

Does this create a dilemma for church leaders? On the one hand, public holidays and bank holidays provide an opportunity to catch the lost sheep. But that means shaping the service around the expectations of short-lived visitors, rather than the dwindling ranks of regular devotees.

This tension was evident in the past several years we have attended the midnight service at our local church. Many old faces would come back. But the church was not as they left it. Specifically, the music director and the choir had new songs.

Every now and then these were great. Most of the time, they were fine. But they were known only to regulars, not to guests. So instead of the exhilarating experience of a room full of people joining in on the song, half the room was humming to a tune they had never heard before. Finally, more and more of them are looking for alternatives; a church that played the favorites, a service where they knew the lyrics.

I can’t blame my old church for its music. They go there every week, not me. More precisely, they believe, and not me.

But I don’t feel like an intruder in this other department. Even in increasingly irreligious times, we live in a nation that has been deeply shaped by Christianity. And that means that the Church, and the Church of England in particular, is a repository of the national ritual to which all of us, believers or not, are entitled.

Those old songs, for example, and the ones my grandparents and great-grandparents sang. The words of the traditional wedding ceremony are the promises that men and women have made to each other for centuries. They may not offer all of us fellowship with the Almighty, but this momentary sense of connection to our history is still precious. In a society increasingly short on common experience and shared ritual, these things are more important, not less.

So I continue my idle annual hunt for a service that suits me. I guess I’ll never become “a taster or a connoisseur of churches,” but Wormwood will probably settle for a job well done. Merry Christmas to everyone !